End of school year

It's that time of year again - last day of the school year. I can't believe my little mister is due to go up to year 2 in September, time really does fly!

Last day of the school year also means presents for the teachers. Unfortunately, this means 3 gifts for little mister to take as his year have had two teachers (well, they've had lots but that's another story) and a teaching assistant and as usual I left it till the last minute. Hence being up until 11pm last night then doing some quick finishing off at 6.30am this morning! I am, however, very pleased with the end result.

Each teacher has a card, a gift bag and a gift box:

I was at Crafting Live at Doncaster last Sunday and I was lucky enough to get a spot on the Tonic make and take. We made one of these Oxford boxes and I was so impressed with it I just had to buy it! I'm really pleased how these came out for my first try 😻

 I loved doing the cards as well, I'd bought the stamp and mask sets from Hunkydory specially for this occasion. The 123 and ABC were from the stencil and done in memento ink - London Fog and Tangelo - and the stamps were done in versamark ink so I could colour with my SN aqua blend pencils and the worms, pencils and apples were then blended with the clear sparkle pen.

That's all for now

Happy crafting 😸
Ali xx

Mixed media, first attempt

Hey guys, happy Monday afternoon!

I thought that I'd better start using all the stuff I've been buying and it's with much trepidation that I unveil my first attempt at mixed media.

I have a couple of canvases bought from a certain shop where everything costs the same but I didn't want to ruin one if it all went wrong (no-one could ever accuse me of being an optimist!) so I used the back of one of those "Please do not bend" envelopes. You know, the brown ones that are backed with thick cardboard.

For once, I actually knew what I wanted to do. Quite often with card making I just wing it and spend more time prevaricating over what to use rather than having a plan and getting on with it. I wanted something a little bit "out there" and also something that people that know me can look at and say "yep, that's Ali all right"

For the background I wanted texture so I used a crackle stencil from Imagination crafts, then overlayed that with some card embossed with Sheena Douglass's Day of the Dead embossing folders. The next step was getting some colour in and playing with my, as yet unused, pebeo paints.

A judicious use of gilding wax brought out the detail nicely. 

Then it was time to play! I love the skull die from the Day of the Dead series and I have all the Create a Flower dies as well and particularly like the What a Mesh die so I definitely wanted to add that in along with some spider webs! And what's the point of having all the Create a Flower dies if you don't throw in some flowers! I wanted the flowers to tie in with the background but not detach from the focal point of the skull so I didn't actually stamp them; instead I coloured them with spectrum noir aqua pens, screwed them up whilst wet to get some texture, went over with some memento inks - rhubard stalk and ladybug - for a bit of deeper colour then gilding wax...we all love gilding wax!! For the spider webs I was trying to get a 'covered in dew' look so added some sand texture gel and highlighted with silver gilding wax. Oh, and another reason to love the Create a Flower dies - they're designed for mixed media so can cut a little thicker than standard thin metal dies. 13 sheets of 90gsm copy paper cut in one run through the gemini 😸

I had fun with the skull; I knew that was my focal piece from the word go. I'm a big believer in staying true to yourself regardless of what people think, I mean, what's beautiful to one person can be ugly to another. Be who you want to be, not who other people want you to be. The sentiment from Inkylicious is just beyond perfect.

Whilst not to everyone's taste, I'm really please with the finished product. I think my biggest fan is my 6 year old son, he keeps going to up to it and saying "mummy, that's really beautiful" in a kind of awed and surprised tone of voice!!

Anyhoo, hope you like. If not, that's cool too. And if anyone has any hints, tips, pointers and/or constructive criticism please feel free to comment 😻

Happy crafting
Ali 😸

Trifold cards, files for Brother SNC attached

I really like the trifold kinetic card design and I've working on it for a while so I can get the mats and layers cut on my Brother scan n cut.

After much experimenting and wasted paper I am now happy with the results. I've done two types of trifold, an "innie" and an "outie" however for ease of reference I've just gone for boring "A" and "B"

I like both styles equally but I find that style B is really good for using up my stash of Hunkydory little books, of which I have more than a few!

The finished results:

Trifold A:

 Trifold B:

As you see, for the B style, I can use 3 of the Hunkydory pages, in this case I've mixed and matched 2nd little book of poems, butterflies and everything. For A I've used two of the same design from the faberdashery book.

Anyhoo, I know that some people struggle with trifold cards so I've put together a couple of templates:

Hopefully it's clear enough to understand. Basically, the two cut lines are the same, it's the scoring and folding that differs slightly for each one. For the base card also you'll need to trim a piece of A4 to 27cm to give an overall size of 21cm x 27cm. If you don't put too many embellishments on then the cards will fit easily into a DL envelope, otherwise it'll be a case of making a box for it. No hardship there though, we all love boxes, right?! 😻

On both of the cards I've done a 3rd layer with the little books. On the scan n cut I simply chose the bits I wanted and made them smaller by 6mm (to give a 3mm border) on the horizontal and vertical. If you don't have a scan n cut and need to do the mats manually, I've done a very quick diagram with the measurements (please excuse my scrawl!):

Also, in the spirit of crafty-dafty sharing, I've attached the scan n cut files for the mats and layers if anyone wants to use them. They are in .fcm format and I'm not sure how to convert them (I guess that'll be next on my hit list of things to learn) to SVG, apologies for my current lack on tech savvy-ness. 

So, there you have it. Whilst you still have to do the cutting and scoring on the base manually, I hope that this makes life a little easier for you lucky SNC users in terms of the mats and layers.

Happy crafting 😸
Ali xx

Trifold SNC mats

Temporary hiatus

Sorry that I've been absent lately. Arranging to go back to work after 12 months maternity leave, a 5 year old regressing into a toddler and a poorly husband does not a happy Ali make!!

All this, unfortunately, does not mean that I have not been buying new shinies. I have a whole load of new stencils, some starlight paints, gilding polishes and waxes, stamps from Leonie Tonic and Sheena to name but a few, new cutting dies and the whole sets of SN colourblend and aquablend pencils.

I shall be hunting out my mojo and playing with my new toys instead of feeling sorry for myself and playing Minecraft all day!

Watch this space!

Play time...

I've been very very bad lately, I'm definitely on a very high naughty step 😎

Well, firstly, Crafter's Companion had an uber good deal on the entire collection of Aquatints. They don't come with the pipettes (not an issue, already got loads), brushes or plastic trays but at less than 50 quid for all 34 bottles it would have been rude not to...

Then hubby and I went out to our local Dobbies (also happens to be the home of a CC store 😏) for a Valentine's day coffee date. I'd managed to somehow order something twice off the CC website so wanted to see if I could exchange. The super helpful staff - and they are just lovely there - gave me a refund against the stuff that I bought whilst there and with an extra 14% off for Valentine's day I just had to have the large pack of Pebeo acrylic paint small tubes. I'm going to have lots and lots of playing to do 😍

Colour therapy

I love to colour, it's my "me" time, my relax time, my "oh my God, how did it get to that time" time!

There's loads that I need to do at the moment - replenish my stock of cards, clean the house, laundry, plan meals, shopping, Dad's laundry ... and the list goes on. But, today has been one of those days; you know, those days when you just really cannot be bothered to do the mundane. So, once his nibs was dropped off at school out came the colouring pens.

I bought a colouring book ages, and I do mean ages, ago. It's one of those that is printed on what feels like cheap copy paper. Luckily, this particular book is only printed on one side so it doesn't matter if the pen bleeds through, I wasn't sure if it would take alcohol markers because of the quality of the paper but I was pleasantly surprised with the result

You can see some areas where the paper just couldn't take it and the blending is a bit patchy but what I'm really pleased with is the hair. It looks stunning (even if I do say so myself) and I'm very happy with the shading as, other that a few lines there wasn't much in the way of shading in the print.

I did the face with Kuretake manga markers but I found they did struggle to blend a bit. The pink on the cheek is a promarker that was an afterthought - the straw that broke the camel's back so to speak. The rest are of course my trusty Spectrum Noir markers.  Bit gutted that my CG1 pen has since run dry whilst I was in the midst of colouring another picture 😢

I also fell in love with the steampunk lady from Sheena Douglas' Time Traveller collection. I've only done her once so far but I'm looking forward to playing some more

Not massively happy with the hair on this lady but it's not going to be a chore doing lots of practice, I find her just mesmerising.

Naughty step .... AGAIN!

Uh oh, I've done it again!!

Took my MIL and her friend to the Crafter's Companion store in Chesterfield for a free make and take (so I could play with the new SN Illustrator pens 😆) however I did not come away empty handed ... oopsy 😳

Anyhoo, the Illustrator pens are lush. Unfortunately my make and take turned into a make and leave. The lady kept whisking my colouring away from me to show to everyone 😲 so in the end I said I would leave it for her!

I do love me a spot of colouring, we must have been there a good few hours just colouring and chatting. Bliss. This is what I left with them:

The flowers were just two colours of pen with colourblend pencils over the top. I must learn to take better pictures, these really don't do it justice!

My place on the naughty step is booked because of this:

I've never done steampunk before but I just love the lady and the cogs; looking forward to playing with them next week 😊

Twist and .... pop!

I'm loving the twist n pop cards and now I've got the hang of it it's easy to turn most cards into one. The latest card is for little mister to give out, a birthday party for one of his friends at school this time. I thought I'd go for something a little bit different this time.

Clean and simple on the outside:

The when you look inside POW! an explosion of colour:

The only problem with adding the twist and pop part is that it does make the card fairly weighty, thank goodness I don't have to post it!

A florist I am not...

I thought I would try my hand at making some ribbon flowers for embellishments. I mean, they can be pretty pricey to buy and I have loads of ribbon in my crafty stash. How hard can it be....

So the one at the bottom was my first full flower (I have thrown many other attempts away that didn't gather up properly) then I did the polka dot one and lastly the organza one. At that point I'd been at it about 2 hours and my poor fingers were well and truly cooked with hot glue.

Now I see why people buy them as they're so damn fiddly to make! I think it's safe to say I won't be going into mass production of these any time soon

Fantasy watercolour

I used to be a Create and Craft only girl but just lately I've been watching a lot of Hochanda. I find that they do more technical demonstrations rather than C&C which are mostly putting cards together from a kit.

Lately I've been branching out and doing more things that are a little out of my comfort zone. Inspired by a demo done by Sheena Douglas with Spectrum Noir aquatints (these are next on my wish list) I thought 'ooh, I could do that'. I had to improvise as I only currently have aqua markers and with the addition of a clear sparkle pen (I do love me some sparkle overlay) and my shiny new set of Hunkydory Twilight Kingdom stamps I came up with this:

It could do with the stamped images being a bit darker - I used Memento tuxedo black, which in hindsight is probably not the right choice for a watercolour background. I might have to try with some Staz-on or perhaps heat emboss in black next time.

I'm loving the moon and the effect with the clouds ... thanks for the inspiration Sheena :D

Birthday treat

So it was my birthday at the beginning of the month - I'm 21 and some months, before you ask ;) - and as luck would have it there was a make and take demo at my local Crafters Companion store. Two places were booked and on my birthday I dragged my crafty MIL along with me for an hour and a half of messiness with Leonie Pujal.

What a blast :)

We played with sparkle pens, water misters, paintbrushes, pots of water and, the piece de resistance, shaving foam! I've always wanted to try out the shaving foam technique but never quite wanted to cope with the mess (I'm actually not a messy crafter normally). What a fab morning we had. It was great to learn a new technique and have a natter with other crafters; and of course, the highlight was meeting Leonie, she really is lovely (and as mad as she appears on TV!!)

These are the results of our playing:

I particularly like the one on the right in the first picture, it looks like the milky way or something from Star Trek! I was also really surprised with the way the shaving foam works through a stencil (bottom picture). I'll definitely be doing it again

Fiscal satisfaction

Very excited!!

Following on from the birthday card I made for my son's friend I was asked by her grandmother to make a card for her soon to be new great granddaughter :)

Over the moon to have my first card sale, this is what I came up with:

And then, when I went to deliver the card, the daughter then asked if she could have one done also ... WOOHOO!!

So I thought I'd have another play! I love the idea of the twist n pop cards however I don't want to rely on buying card blanks or an expensive die so it was another morning spent researching google, wasting scrap card getting the measurements and folds right.

This time, I didn't need my S&C as the mats and layers were all basic shapes. Plus, I have a shiny new cuterpillar crop (thank you darling hubby for allowing me to order it) so no more frayed edges from my V-trimmer!

The end result:

I'm very pleased how these both turned out and now I know how it's done the twist n pop cards are actually ridiculously easy to do. I think I'll be doing more of these in the future.

Experimenting gone right

My little lad went to a birthday party the other week and I wanted to make a card for him to give to the birthday girl. I've always liked the look of shutter cards but I've never actually done one. So I spent the morning searching Google for templates, wasting about a dozen sheets of scrap card getting the measurements right (and destroying the blade on my craft knife in the process by dropping it on the floor!) and then getting all the mats and layers right in Canvas for my S&C - I would be lost without that machine!!

Anyway, this is the result of my hard work:

Safe to say I was pretty happy with the result :) I was even happier when Georgia's grandmother asked me to make a card for her for her new great grand-daughter :)

My first ever sale ... YIPPEE!!